Critical Mass
by ScarletRaven1001
Summary: The fate of the war hangs in a balance - any wrong move could cause the scales to tip the wrong way. But when the balance could be swayed only by the death of the one person Heero has sworn to protect, is stregth alone enough, or has the decision been mad


A/N: I had just recently rediscovered my love for Gundam Wing, so like everything I do, I took it to the extreme again. Bordering on addiction, I guess, so I had to write fanfiction, or else, my OCD would drive me totally insane. Here is my first shot at a Gundam Wing ficcy. Another AU from the "Assistant Evil Overlord of Chaos". As such, terms and even places will not be used exactly the way they had been in the actual series. Please review, and thank you very much for your time. No flames please! Enjoy!

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing.

Warning: Blood and death. Lots of it.

oooooooooo

CRITICAL MASS

Phase 1 – The Core

oooooooooo

The lights were dim, hinting at the dark, secretive strategizing going on in the large, unadorned underground chamber. Every breath was measured... as if any inhalation too deep would be dealt with intense repercussion. Deep blue eyes stared unflinchingly at every single member of the Preventers, the cabinet he had been part of for the last eight years, as his mind mechanically memorized every detail of the mission ahead of him.

The words "eliminate" and "everybody" flashed red lights in his mind as they crept out of the commander's lips. He raised his hand to question the latest development to the plan they had been training for and discussing over the past two weeks.

"Yuy, you have an inquiry?"

Heero Yuy stood at attention as he began to speak, a low monotone borne from intense, impersonal training for more than half of his young life. "Tomorrow's mission... we have to kill every single inhabitant of the Center?"

"Yes, Yuy. It is vastly important that we destroy every single one of them," the commander spoke, the white mask perpetually concealing his face not betraying the emotion behind his words. "Should any remain, even the worst of the lot, what we have been fighting for over the past ten years would be nothing."

He merely nodded, taking his seat as the man seated on his left side raised his own question.

"Barton?"

Trowa Barton stood, his long auburn bangs shielding much of his face as he spoke. "The Trainees... should we take prisoners?"

"No," Zechs Marquise responded, his lips twisting into a frown beneath his mask. "None of them are to be alive by sunrise the day after tomorrow."

"But won't it be more beneficial if we kept at least one of them alive for questioning?" another said off to Barton's left, not bothering to rise. His dark eyes assessed the plans laid out on the board before them, a hand casually lifting to brush some of his black bangs from his face.

"I agree with Wufei... I mean, Mr. Chang," a blond man agreed somewhere from Heero's right. He rose, his green eyes soft yet piercing as he looked around the room at his fellow Preventers. "Killing all of them... would that not make us just as bad as them? We want peace, not the continuation of the war Oz had started!"

"I see your point, Winner," Zechs said. "But the Trainees in the Center are being trained for our complete annihilation! Not just us members of the Preventer faction, but the lives of the innocents as well. Those Trainees are capable of..."

"We know what they can do, Zechs," Duo Maxwell spoke from Heero's right, his violet eyes flashing, his long braided hair thrown carelessly over his shoulder. "We've known since before the Schbeiker assassination six years ago. But Quatre – I mean, Winner, is right. So those Trainees are super smart. We don't know whether or not what they are doing is against their will. We," he motioned to himself and the four other teenage Preventers seated around him. "know all too well how it feels to have to be forced to do something we don't initially like. We never know, but maybe given the chance, those Trainees would actually tell us all about Oz's secret weapon... the one that they are being trained for right now."

"We cannot take any chances, Maxwell," Zechs said calmly. "The Weapon, according to intelligence, is nearly complete – and those at the Center are the only ones capable of understanding it. If they manage to work it, we will not live to see the end of this war."

The five assassins sat still, carefully contemplating those words. They were all tired of the chaos... and with the erection of the Weapon, there appeared to be no end in sight...

Four pairs of eyes turned towards the teenagers' unspoken leader. Heero Yuy nodded at his comrades' determined looks, the placid expression on his face unflinching even as he stood and spoke for all his team mates.

"Mission accepted."

oooooooooo

A sharp hiss of pain filled the small room as the whip cracked against her pale skin. Another crack made her cry out in pain, and she curled in on herself, as if making herself as small as physically possible would lessen the sting of the punishment. Her long blond hair lay matted to her sweaty cheeks, brushing against the cuts the whip had made on her arms as well.

"Enough, please!" she cried out softly, desperately trying to hold in the tears. She shut her sky blue eyes, willing the moisture away. "I – I would never dare to speak that way again, Lady Une."

"You had better not," the woman rolled the whip back into a coil in her hands, regarding the shuddering girl at her feet. "You know where you would be had it not been for Oz, girl. Learn your place!"

"Y-yes, Lady Une," she replied, pushing up on her hands to slowly get back on her knees before the woman. "I swear... I would never be impertinent again."

"Good," Une replied, turning her back to her to leave the room. "Fix yourself up, and I expect you back in the lecture hall tomorrow, at the same time, with your composure back. Is that understood, Relena Darlian?"

"Yes, Lady Une," she replied, watching the woman press a combination on the lock by her door, making the machine unlock the locking mechanisms from the hinges to let her out of the chamber.

As soon as she was alone, Relena grabbed a pillow from her bed, which happened to be her only appliance, merrily consisting of nothing but a mattress and a blanket, and forcefully flung it at the door. She screamed at the locked entry, thanking whoever might be up there that her room was soundproof, and was on the northernmost wing of the Center. And if she was not mistaken, _the _northernmost room of the entire building.

Her eyes blazed in fury, her blood boiling as she remembered the reason for her punishment.

_- "This Weapon is the most important thing Oz possesses. And it will bring an end to the war. It will be your duty to rid the world of the traitors belonging to the Preventer Faction! Remember that!" Une declared as she stood before her and the other Trainees._

_Relena nearly rolled her eyes. None of the Trainees actually knew what the Weapon was, except that it was a machine for mass destruction. She glanced around at her comrades, noticing the standout determination in the eyes of dark-haired Hilde Schbeiker. Undoubtedly the best Trainee, the orphaned Hilde harbored grave resentment towards the Preventers, for reasons she refused to talk about._

"_But won't we be more horrible, if we were to kill them all?" Relena began before she realized what she was doing. The horrified, shocked expressions on her fellow Trainees faces told her just how wrong what she had just done had been. "We – we would be committing genocide!"_

_Une's eyes hardened, and she left the podium she had been speaking on to slowly make her way towards Relena. Dorothy Catalonia, a senior Trainee, signaled frantically from her seat by the door for Relena to stop whatever she was doing, her silver blue eyes expressing worry, but Relena stubbornly held her ground. _

"_What do you propose we do, Darlian?" _

"_Something less drastic than the annihilation of an entire faction would be pleasant," she commented, her eyes meeting the elder woman's. "Maybe... we could settle all this diplomatically..."_

"_And you joined this Center believing that is still possible!" Une mocked her, and Relena's hidden anger suddenly bubbled up to the surface. _

"_I had NEVER wanted to join the Center in the first place!" -_

It had been the truth. She had been living in relative peace until a little over five years ago, when the world she knew was turned upside-down with the death of her foster father. She had then been taken by Oz, and was being "trained" for the execution of "world peace" ever since. She never found out what had happened to her foster mother, her home, or anything else outside the Center.

"I'll get out of here... eventually," she murmured, staring longingly at the door. The moment she had been taken into the Center, a chip had been installed into her skin, so that touching the door would give her a minor electric shock. She could only get out by pressing a button beside her bed, one linked to the guards in the Center, and they could escort her out once they open the door.

So, mechanically disabling the door, which otherwise would have been easy, was out of the question. Taking the chip out was as well – she couldn't very well gouge the chip out of herself with her pillows.

She glared at the door for a long time, mentally devising ways to 'An explosion would be nice," she thought almost dreamily. 'Maybe then, this door would open.'

Imagine her shock when a loud, deafening explosion suddenly demolished her walls.

oooooooooo

"We're in the west wing, Zechs. Send in the Beta Troop," Heero called into the communicator attached to his uniform after Duo had effectively demolished the walls. Infiltrating the Center had been easy. Maxwell had everything when it came to stealth, and with Quatre's brains, Wufei's knowledge in the ancient arts, Trowa's acrobatic skills and Heero's determination, the five young assassins, otherwise known as the Preventer Alpha Troop, snuck through the heavily guarded gates and blazed into the West Wing amidst a flurry of bullets, gunpowder and panicked screams.

Battle-hardened eyes took in the scene playing out before them, watching in almost morbid fascination as members of the Center fell one after another through their guns. Wearing their black Preventer uniforms and moving as if the flames did their bidding, the group resembled every picture of death and hell that had ever been drawn by man.

Trowa entered with his usual two guns, blasting away at anything not wearing the Preventer uniform. Beside him, grinning from ear to ear, was Duo, holding a gun in one hand, and a set of small explosives in the other.

Quatre looked away as he shot each of his victims, as if not seeing them die would alleviate some of his guilt, even as Wufei alternately shot and slashed a short katana through their enemies a few feet away.

"I'll go ahead as planned," Heero said as his other four comrades efficiently wiped out all living things in the Center's west wing. "Duo, go do your own assignment, now."

"Yeah, yeah!" Duo replied, smiling cheekily as he ripped off a door into a room filled with older Trainees. Heero watched as the braided American threw a bomb into the room, drowning out the screams with the mighty explosion.

Giving Heero a small wave, Duo marched off into the direction of the south wing, where his personal mission lay. Heero ran off to the northern wing anticipating the completion of his most important mission yet.

_- "It's up to you, Yuy. Intelligence informed me that the most vital core of the Weapon is on the northernmost wing of the Center," Zechs stated. After the final meeting, he had called Heero aside to tell him the most important part of his mission._

"_Just me?"_

"_Yes. We will focus the attack on the other wings so as not to alert them immediately that we are aware of the existence of this core. They have left only Lieutenant Major Une in charge, and knowing her, she would most likely focus her troops on the wings being attacked."_

"_That is sensible." He remarked._

_. "I trust you can do this perfectly, Yuy. I have absolutely no doubts about your abilities. The north wing will probably be empty, making it easy for you to destroy the core."_

"_What is this core, Zechs?"_

"_Unfortunately, no one knows. Our undercover was discovered and killed before he found out. Just destroy anything and everything in that wing. The others will take care of the other three wings," Zechs assured him even as he began to ask._

"_Leave it to me. I will destroy the core." -_

'Destroy the core. I have to destroy the core,' he repeated in a mental mantra, as he mechanically and effectively wiped out anything and anyone barring his way to the northernmost wing.

oooooooooo

"WHAT!" Lady Une shouted into the communicator. It had begun ringing the middle of her lecture, making her already foul mood worsen.

But the news had been enough to drive a fist-sized lump into the middle of her throat.

"How did members of the Preventer Faction get through security?" she demanded, amidst the sounds of distress coming from her Trainees, who having heard the situation through the video phone, began to panic.

"We don't know, Lieutenant! But... ah!" the line went dead, but not before the vidphone showed the messenger getting shot in the head from somewhere off screen.

Panicked screams and cries came from the Trainees, and Une knew, without a doubt, that she had to get them to safety.

Hilde's eyes narrowed, her blood boiling at the very thought of Preventers. 'They're here... those murderers are here!' her mind screamed, and as Une began instructing the students to line up so they could head off into an escape car, Hilde stealthily crept out, but not before grabbing a gun from inside her desk.

Slowly, but surely, Hilde stole away from the room, releasing the safety of her weapon. Hiding behind a wall panel, she watched as her classmates were ushered through the door out the wing. Mere seconds after, she heard and saw a blinding explosion come from the direction her comrades had just taken, preceded by muted screams that were immediately cut short by the blast.

The gun nearly fell from her grasp as grim realization stole in... 'God... no!' her mind screamed repeatedly, as she subconsciously ticked off the names of all those who had been in that group – all her friends for the last five years.

Several gunshots followed the explosion shortly; probably of those who had escaped the explosion, being completely killed by the merciless murderer who had thrown the bombs.

"Sorry, dolls. I'm just doin' my job. It's not like I'm enjoying myself or anything..." a startlingly familiar voice said after the gunshots ceased.

Hilde stiffened as she realized why the voice, and the words, seemed painfully familiar. Her mind wound back to six years ago...

_- "I'll be right back, daddy!" eleven year old Hilde promised, skipping off to the vendor wielding the most powerful tool against her sanity – a roll of cotton candy._

"_Be careful, sweetie!" Mr. Schbeiker called, draping his arms across his wife's shoulders. "Mommy and I will be waiting here."_

"_Yep!" she called, turning her head to regard her parents..._

_Just as a gunshot sounded, and her father fell to the ground, blood streaming from the wound on his head._

_She stared in transfixed horror as her mother screamed, before another gunshot sounded, and her mother fell as a bloodied heap into her father's arms. People began to scramble away in a panic, as a third gunshot pierced the air, but she continued to stare, unable to move from her spot slightly behind a dead tree..._

_When the crowd had cleared, a boy, with his back turned to her, calmly approached her parents' bodies. He knelt beside them and checked each of them for a pulse, brown hair reaching the middle of his back, spilling over his shoulders as he spoke._

"_Sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Schbeiker. I had been trying to do my job..."_

_She never heard the rest of his words as the shock of it all suddenly registered... and she fainted dead away. -_

Her grip on the gun became painfully strong as the disembodied figure emerged, his unmistakable brown hair longer than it had been and now pulled back into a braid.

Painful memories, bittersweet memories, angry memories assailed her, and she aimed her gun as he approached the last room, the room she and her now departed friends had just vacated.

With steady, fury-fueled movements, she fired.

oooooooooo

Countless magazines and two bullet wounds later, Heero finally reached a stairwell indicating the direction towards the said wing. The moment he stepped into the hallways labeled accordingly, he began to systematically open doors and shoot at everything inside before even looking to see what he was shooting at.

People did not even get the chance to scream as he barged in and methodically began spraying the air with bullets. By the time he reached the last few rooms of the wing, he was drenched with blood, others' and his own, his eyes scarred by the number of dead bodies he had seen everytime he got finished annihilating the occupants of every single room.

He was nearing a dead end, almost to the last three rooms in the wing. Everytime he opened a door, he prayed to whatever might be listening that it was devoid of people, but less than ten had been unoccupied. As he yanked the door open to the second to the last door, he found a room buzzing with equipment, machines and supercomputers, completely devoid of people.

"How careless," he muttered, his insides quivering with excitement as he realized that the core had to be there somewhere. He animatedly, yet meticulously, sprayed the entire chamber with bullets, nearly emptying all the magazines of bullets wrapped around his torso as he took care to shoot a bullet into everything, including every tiny part of all the mechanisms in the room.

After firing around ten rounds of bullets at each piece, and even more on things he deigned significant, he turned to leave the wing entirely, before the last door in the entire wing caught his eye. His orders, to destroy anything and everything in the wing, came back to him, and he automatically went to the door. He tried to break it down, only to discover that it was held by a special lock. He would need explosives.

Reaching into his black vest, Heero pulled out a bomb that Duo had given him before they left headquarters. Setting it against the wall, he pulled out a small match, lit it, and watched with satisfaction as it exploded, making the wall seemingly vanish before his eyes...

And revealing a sight he had never expected to see.

oooooooooo

_- "The south wing contains all the lecture rooms, Maxwell. Make sure that each person in each lecture room is killed. Do you understand me?" Zechs instructed._

"_Man, you're speakin' my language." -_

Duo, self-declared God of Death, cheerfully threw three bombs into each lecture room he found. All rooms were sound-proof, enough that there had been no chance for anyone to warn others of the impending danger.

A small group of female Trainees, being led to safety by a familiar looking soldier, emerged from around the corner. He hid behind a protruding wall panel, drew out four strong explosives, and quickly threw them at the group.

Screams followed his action, only to be muted by the explosion. He stepped forward after the detonation, his heart squeezing at the sight – mutilated bodies, burnt bodies, some daring to hang onto life by a nearly severed thread.

An entire wall had fallen over about two or three of the girls, including the soldier, and he recognized from the plain white uniforms that the girls had been Trainees. Closing his eyes, he shot at the few remaining survivors to quickly end their pain, knowing that they wound have no chance to make it until the next day.

"Sorry, dolls," he said sincerely, kneeling down beside them. "I'm just doin' my job. It's not like I'm enjoying myself or anything..."

He stood slowly, determination lighting his eyes. This... pain! This death... everything had to stop!

He had covered almost the entirety of the relatively small wing by now, and as he neared the very last room, he raised five of his explosives, ready to give the final blast to the last room of the wing...

Until a gunshot resounded, and the pain of a bullet wound invaded his senses.

Tucking the bombs into his vest in a flash, Duo turned to face his attacker.

A woman. A vaguely familiar woman with short dark hair and blazing eyes, dressed in a Trainee uniform. She stepped out of the shadows of a concealed overhang, a gun in her hands.

"You... you murderer. You bloody damn murderer!" she screamed, before firing another shot at him.

Duo ducked, quickly, whipping out his own gun just as he realized why she looked familiar...

She looked exactly like her mother.

oooooooooo

Relena was thrown back by the explosion, and she lay coughing on her bed as the smoke slowly cleared from her demolished wall. As the dirt drifted down, she realized that a man, about the same age as her, was standing before her, a blank look on his face.

She blushed – she was well aware that it was not the proper time to be blushing, but she couldn't help it. The handsome young man was about her age, with disheveled brown hair and dangerous blue eyes. Something about him made her shiver, and it was not from the cold that wafted into her room after he had felled her wall.

She stood slowly, and the man watched her intently as she faced him, her hands shaking at her sides. "Who are you?" she asked.

A handgun being aimed between her eyes caught her completely by surprise. Her eyes widened as the man replied in a monotone voice.

"None of your business."

She gulped. "I think it is if you're gonna swing that thing in front of my eyes."

Heero's mind was in turmoil. He had killed countless other people – in as many gruesome ways – but this girl... he found that as if by magic, an invisible force had taken control over his hand, and he could _not_, for the life of him, pull the trigger.

Her blond hair framed an innocent face, a face that he would dare say should have belonged to an angel. Her blue eyes were wide and curious, the drying blood that clung to her arms and cheeks testament to her suffering – but her eyes betrayed no bitterness.

She must have recognized his uniform then, because in that instant, her eyes gained a spark of remembrance and... hope. "You're a Preventer. Have you come here to kill me?"

With his gun still pointed at her, she advanced slightly, looking into his eyes. "Then do it now," she continued. "This place... I _hate _being here," she stressed her point by narrowing her eyes. "If death is the only way I can escape the Center, then kill me now."

Heero pulled the safety, but his shaking hands refused to cooperate with the trigger. While his face remained a hard mask of stone, his emotions and thoughts had turned into a roller coaster of incoherent words and reminiscing.

For once in Heero Yuy's short, violent life, he found he could not kill someone.

He put his gun back in its holster, before taking a bomb out of his vest. The girl watched in puzzlement as he placed the bomb beside the wall opposite the one he had just blown up, lighting the short fuse before he pulled the girl against his chest, shielding her from the debris of the explosion.

The smoke from the explosion cleared, revealing the area of woods surrounding the Center. No guards, Preventers, or living being in sight, Heero pushed the girl towards the gap in the wall. He pulled a compass out of his pocket, checked it, then tossed it at the girl.

"Wha..." the girl began, only to be cut off.

"You want to live?"

"Of course!" she exclaimed. "Away from the Center, that is."

"Go. Straight to the north. Keep running until you can't run anymore."

"But..."

An explosion resounded from somewhere inside the building, the sounds gradually becoming louder as whoever was causing the ruckus came nearer.

His expression still placid, he turned to her, only the slight narrowing of his eyes belying his urgency. "Just go. I'll catch up. I won't let you die," he added, questioning his reasons even as the words left his mouth.

Another explosion. She cringed, before smiling at him, a small, happy smile that sent Heero's thoughts haywire. "Thank you..." she said, before dashing off into the night.

As the Preventer instructed, she didn't stop running, even as she saw the Center turn into a giant ball of fire, its foundations slowly crumbling to the ground. She didn't stop running as the sun rose, painting the sky lovely shades of pink and gold that she had not seen in over five years. She ran until she collapsed, thoughts of the Preventer with the haunting blue eyes the last ones to enter her mind as sweet oblivion took over.

oooooooooo

A/N: I know that the Gundam pilots would never kill innocents, but the Trainees are not exactly "innocent" in the whole thing. Please do not flame me about that.

Please review. Until next time!


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